“Once again, I picked promo for an irrelevant reason. German/Irish blackened death trio Khôra wound up in my review queue because their name sounds like the name of one of our cats (Kora). I feel like that’s a perfectly reasonable justification for album selection. If it isn’t, well, then I guess I don’t care. Khôra doesn’t care either, and put out whatever the hell they want regardless of what your tastes or expectations are.” Cats and jammers.
“Every now and then you stumble across a young band and find yourself in the presence of enormous potential. Sometimes that potential is on full display and impossible to miss, and sometimes it’s partially concealed behind flaws or kinks yet to be worked out. My experience with the promo for II by Ireland’s Death the Leveller has been an odd combination of both these scenarios.” Irish eyes are crying.
“Prior to this review, you could have jotted down what I knew about sean-nós singing on the back of a postage stamp and still had most of the stamp free for other notes. Still, we are where we all are and probably only Fós, a collaboration between Irish singer Orla Cadden Patel and multi-instrumentalist Fionn Murray, have much right to feel aggrieved. Sean-nós turns out to be a traditional form of Irish singing. Typically unaccompanied, the singing is highly ornamented in terms of melodic style and the lyrics often deal in laments and tales of historic events. That description does not, perhaps, suggest it as the obvious partner for electronica-driven drone but then, as I always try to explain to non-metal friends and colleagues who ask (and usually regret doing so), one of the things I love about metal is its seemingly endless ability to blend genres and influences.” Luck o’ the Irish.
“Single-song albums. The reason Holdeneye and Twelve no longer speak. The reason there’s still a bloodstain in the copy room after Diabolus went after El Cuervo for suggesting that Winter’s Gate ‘Isn’t really a single song, is it? I mean… not really…’ Ya see, the very idea is divisive. But it’s also philosophically interesting. What makes a song? A unifying idea or theme? If parts of a song are so different as to be unrecognizable, have you not just chewing-gummed two songs together? In this era of instant gratification, where listeners have goldfish-like attention spans, are these epic tracks justified? Or just a needlessly pretentious gimmick?” Long did the wind blow.
“I haven’t gotten my hands on much trve metal of late beyond the massive overdose administered by Atlantean Kodex in September. That was enough to keep me sacking and pillaging like a berserk Vandal for months, but a booster shot of trveness is never a bad thing. Northern Ireland’s epic heavy metal act Terminus is set to deliver such an inoculation this week with their sophomore release A Single Point of Light.” Light the torches.
“I am ashamed. Why? Because I almost let this badass record slip through my greedy clutches. You see, my good friend (who we know as Septic ’round these parts) randomly pops in now and again to apprise me on some of his choice metallic discoveries. He introduced Irish/German/Dutch quartet Ascend the Hollow to me and I was instantly hooked. Like, so fast my head spun. I needed to share my excitement for Echoes of Existence with as many people as possible, but how? It would’ve been grand if we received promo, I thought. Then, all of a sudden I received a virtual sucker punch while rooting around the bin—the thing’s been sitting there since the end of April! How in the actual heck did I miss that??? And lo I experienced great embarrassment. I nearly neglected one of the coolest new bands to materialize out of absolute nowhere this year.” Finder of nearly lost things.
“Since 2005, Belfast based space-sludge juggernauts Slomatics have scoured the cosmic plains for doomy inspiration. The universe is a vast place, and with their seventh album set to be released in 2019, Slomatics haven’t run out of inspiration. Every Slomatics’ record tells a story. Their 2016 release Future Echo Returns was an earthy beast, dense and direct. Bone-rattling heaviness in the form of fuzz-laden doom was the main tool used on that record; in my review of that release I desired more tenderness, more humanity. Canyons is more expansive, an exploration of the far reaches of the universe.” Star sludge.
“With that technicolor cover and macho album title, First Strike makes its presence and intentions clear from the get go. Or so you’d think, but you’d be wrong—this is a melodic thrash metal band we’re talking about here. If you never liked and never will like, uh, “melodic thrash metal,” Ketos won’t change your mind on the subject and you can feel free to scroll right down to the comments and tell everybody to listen to some vomit-inducing folk-power-black album on bandcamp. It’s your loss, since First Strike is a great example of “melodic thrash metal” passing both the taste test and sniff test—it’s a good album from a band with some serious chops.” Keto friendly.
“The album owes its name to one of the more boring and inconsequential areas of theology, triclavianism, a school of thought professing the notion that Jebus was crucified with not four, but three, nails. On the contrary, it owes its music to both black metal and thrash; is it able to nail the fusion of the two?” Nail pounding metal.
“One major player in the field were my countrymen Pestilence, particularly with their sophomore album Consuming Impulse. Until they stopped doing what they did best anyway. Then-vocalist Martin Van Drunen, with his anguished, slavering cries put the band on the map, his style often imitated but never transcended. Now, another imitator has arisen from the fields of Ireland by the name of Zealot Cult. Can they do justice to their idols, or will idolatry lead to naught but broken effigies?” Join up.
